Examples Of Evil In Beowulf

An anonymous person wrote Beowulf, calling his audience to the heroic story. Beowulf has a long journey, accomplishing many things including battle. Beowulf shows the audience how to win over the human population by entering in battle with our worst horrors. Beowulf is represented as three types of evil enemies during the story. The three types of evil that are shown in the story are abstract, moral, and most of the time physical evil. Grendel shows the scary image of the physical type of evil. Living "in a hell not hell but earth," he is never actually described, thus becoming the unknown, the thing in the dark all men fear (II. 103-4). Evil shows greed, and for Grendel "no crime could ever be enough" (I. 136). Evil is everywhere, "invisibly following them from the edge of the marsh, always there, and unseen" (II. 161-2). Beowulf wants to fight the monster with his bare hands, by this he shows the strength and bravery that he has. Beowulf then wins the battle against Grendel, “Beowulf a prince of the Geats, had killed Grendel, ended grief, the sorrow, the suffering forced on Hrothgar’s helpless people by a bloodthirsty fiend” (II. 481-5). The Battle with Grendel’s mother was very intense, “While the thanes are sleeping, Grendel’s mother comes to avenge her son” (Raffel, 27). Grendel’s mother is very furious at Beowulf …show more content…
The dragon shows it’s physical evil by flight and fire. The fire dragon is very fierce because it attacks Beowulf’s throat, “For the third time the dragon charges and fixes its tusks in Beowulf throat” (Raffel, 27). Beowulf gets injured and his neck starts to swell up, after a while Beowulf had realized that he is about to die. “He tells Wiglaf to give the dragon’s treasure to the Geats” (Raffel, 27). During this part, Beowulf wants Wiglaf to give the Geats the treasures he has received from killing the fire